Submitted by: Corliss Lee

All day RUSA preconference held 6/27/08 in Anaheim

featured speakers:

Cathy de Rosa (OCLC) (see some of her reports)
Michelle Jacobs (UCLA)
Caleb Tucker-Raymond (Oregon Statewide Digital Reference Service)
David Lankes (Syracuse University) (slides and audio)

See also: Description of preconference and Librarian Like Me blog on the presentations (scroll down past first posting)

Summary Notes: I pulled out some points and put them under following themes (my terms, not necessarily theirs): Privacy, Interactivity, The New User, and The New Library

Privacy

Jacobs:

• this generation doesn't care as much about privacy; avg American appears on tape or camera 200 times a day!
• privacy is a perception

De Rosa:

• users want privacy windows not privacy gates -- they want to be given a level of control (ability to change passwords etc.)
• what people didn't used to want to share: personal health information
• BUT: Google Health, Microsoft's Health Vault. Ways to store your medical records all in one place. Users might be willing to do this for the convenience. Privacy implications.
• (Q&A: Is this because they can get pharmaceutical advertising?)
• 5 years ago people felt this way about financial info
• report: Sharing, Privacy and Trust in our Networked World

Tucker-Raymond:

• Privacy isn't about privacy, it's about anonymity and trust and obscurity

Interactivity

De Rosa:

• technology that doesn't involve me isn't worth sitting still for
• the Internet: 2000 we were browsing; 2003 we were interacting; 2007 we were creating; now we are sharing
• how can we design the library so that users can participate?
• mashups allow you to choose the way you learn.
• books are very social things -- we share them, book groups, etc

The New User

De Rosa:

• by 2010 teenagers will outnumber Baby Boomers
• what users want is simplicity
• Q: what makes people willing to pay for library services? A: make a transformation

Jacobs:

• YouTube video: A vision of students today by anthropologist Michael Wesch
• huge impact: some conferences based on it
• today's child is bewildered when s/he enters the 19th century environment - in the 19th century information was scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects and schedules
• powerpoint is not the best way to teach but it allows our classes to be big and allows us to move students further away
• we have lost the concept of listening to what students have to say
• 97% of students will arrive with computers; 94% with cellphones; 200 plus million cell phones in the US;
• Information Now generation: they're used to information coming to them

The New Library

De Rosa:

• is it the library's role to build a social networking site?
• users: not sure; but agree that library should do book clubs, discussion groups, community events

Jacobs:

• UC Merced has 2 rules: if you spill something, let us know so we can clean it up, and don't use pizza for a bookmark (is this really engraved on a plaque there?)
• user-centered spaces, bulk of collections online
• no reference desk -- but they provide reference service (online, in their offices and Michelle did it via texting as well)
• It's not the desks that help people, it's the people who help people
• tagging is cataloging for everyone -- we should love this!
• UCLA started Texting reference service July 1
• when you think about an emerging technology, what factors should you consider?:
• is it innovative? what is the technology -- graspable by anyone? impact on education? user centered? shared experience? excitement?

Tucker-Raymond

• it's a mistake to think of virtual reference as a technology -- it's a service
• not trying to be efficient: trying to be effective
• he's not interested in change, he's interested in progress (See Librarian Like Me blog for his advice on planning a virtual reference service)
• define success: if you don't someone else will do it for you -- don't just track statistics -- have goals
• we shouldn't do marketing unless we have done usability testing: how do we name the service something that people will understand?

David Lankes

• technology is the answer: but what was the question?
• contexts are socially derived
• ex: the word formula: chemical combination? Mathematical expression? Baby food? Depends on context
• are librarians consistent? Do we point to reliable resources? (AskEric study -- yes)
• humans relate information together -- we don't store information as chunks
• he laughs when people say books are intuitive to use: takes 8 years+ to learn to read
• catalogs are easy for librarians to use because we spent 2 years getting MLS
• what is your job? Not to get someone to a thing (knowledge as a unit of commodity) but to get someone to an understanding -- to knowledge
• knowledge is about context and connections
• a reference interview is about trying to understand the context
• librarians serve as facilitators of conversation
• you can have a library without collections -- librarians are the library
• (there's much more: audio and slides)